Internet ads are a bane to my existence. I hate ’em. They are annoying. They are intentionally eye-catching, and advertisers are in an ever-increasing frenzy to get eye-time from surfers like me because — well, that’s why they’re paying for the damned things, right?
The worst I’ve seen (lately) was a pop-under for Orbitz, the new “Hey, we’re the airlines, so we’ll start a travel site, and you can move all your ticket purchases here, putting those other travel sites out of business, but, hell, we won’t ever take advantage of such a monopoly, trust us, we’re the airlines” site. This thing is like 5×8″, and flashes on and off with such a frequency I’m surprised there aren’t folks having epileptic fits triggered by it. You can’t look at it for more than 5 seconds without getting a headache but, more importantly, you can’t not look at it. Every lizard-brain part of your mind says, “Bright flashing lights! Something I must see, or else dinosaur will eat me!”
It is annoying as all hell.
And it’s how the Internet stays relatively free.
Yup. Most content providers out there make use of advertising to at least defray the costs of providing the content. Aside from folks like me who do this sort of thing as a hobby — and I’ve already said I’m a cheapskate. I’m a cheapskate with some concern for my viewers — which is why I bailed from Geocities (and it’s Ad Window of Doom), but also why I won’t purchase more expensive hosting services. At least, not yet.
So, yes, I hate ads, but I also acknowledge that they are a vital part of keeping the Internet from turning into a bunch of fanboy pages and subscription services. Which I suspect will happen in the next ten years, given current trends. But for now, that’s the case.
But while I have accepted the ethical “tragedy of the commons” sort of need for Internet advertising, I’ve decided to draw the line. That line is pop-ups and pop-unders. Not only are they an Abomination Before the Lord, but they raise the annoyance stakes to new levels. Plus, by opeing up new windows, they chew up additional system resources, clutter the screen, etc. They are Evil, Pure Evil from the Eighth Dimension.
So I took the step of downloading PopUp Killer. There are others, but this came recommended, and seems to do the job. PopUp Killer just sits out there and watches each browser window when it opens. If it has a name/domain that is on the PopUp Killer black list (which you can download), then it zaps the window with a little crash of thunder. Very satisfying. It also as a limited AI function to guess (with user-defined sensitivity) what might be a pop-up/under ad, and zaps that, too (this latter function can be set to simply prompt you, which I find to be a better alternative, since it sometimes guesses things wrong).
The Black List is a bit overzealous in places — it wildcards all the Tripod sites, for example — but you can also easily set up an exemption list.
I will not install software (available) that strips out ads from within pages — TANSTAAFL — but I will do this. And do.
Take back the Web. Solidarity Forever. Up the People! Right On, Man!